Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus Carlos Kalmar, Principal Conductor Christopher Bell, Chorus Director The Rite of Spring Friday, August 16, 2013 at 6:30PM Saturday, August 17, 2013 at 7:30PM Jay Pritzker Pavilion Grant Park orchestra and chorus Carlos Kalmar, Conductor Donald Nally, Guest Chorus Director LISZT The Black Gondola orch. Adams ADAMS Harmonium Part I. Negative Love Part II. Because I Could Not Stop for Death Wild Nights STRAVINSKY The Rite of Spring, Pictures of Pagan Russia Part One: The Adoration of the Earth Introduction — Dance of the Young Girls — Mock Abduction — Round Dance — Games of the Rival Clans — Procession of the Wise Elder — Adoration of the Earth — Dance of the Earth Part Two: The Sacrifice Introduction — Mystical Circles of the Young Girls — Glorification of the Chosen Victim — The Summoning of the Ancients — Ritual of the Ancients — Sacrificial Dance This concert is sponsored by The Elizabeth Morse Charitable Trust 2013 Program Notes, Book 5 A23 Friday, August 16 and Saturday, August 17, 2013 CARLOS KALMAR’s biography can be found on page 8. Donald Nally begins his new role as director of choral organizations at Northwestern University this autumn. He is conductor of The Crossing, a professional chamber choir in Philadelphia focused on new music and winner of the 2009 and 2011 ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. He is also chorus master of the Chicago Bach Project, an annual performance of Bach’s masterworks; until recently he was music director of Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble. Mr. Nally has served in many prestigious international positions: as chorus master at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and at Welsh National Opera, and for many seasons at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Prior to Wales, he lived in Philadelphia, where he was chorus master at the Opera Company of Philadelphia and music director of the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia. The recipient of the 2002 Margaret Hillis National Award for Excellence in Choral Music, Mr. Nally holds a unique position in that over the last three seasons his ensembles have been listed in the Top Ten Classical Music Events by the major newspapers of Chicago, Philadelphia and Cincinnati. In the 2011-2012 season, he conducted the opening of the International Festival of Sacred Music in Riga with the Latvian State Choir, was visiting professor in conducting at Indiana University and at the University of Illinois, and received both the Alumni Merit Award from Westminster Choir College and the 2012 Louis Botto Award for Innovative Action and Entrepreneurial Zeal from Chorus America. His book, Conversations with Joseph Flummerfelt, was published in 2011. A24 2013 Program Notes, Book 5 Friday, August 16 and Saturday, August 17, 2013 The Black Gondola (1882) Franz Liszt (1811-1886) Orchestral Realization by John Adams The Black Gondola in Adams’ orchestral realization is scored for two flutes, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons, three horns, timpani, harp and strings. The performance time is nine minutes. This is the first performance of this work by the Grant Park Orchestra. Richard Wagner, his heart already failing, was nearly exhausted by the taxing work of bringing Parsifal to the stage for its premiere at Bayreuth in July 1882. He and his wife, Cosima, elected to escape the rigors of another German winter by returning to Venice that fall, staying in the sumptuous Palazzo Vendramin on the Grand Canal. On November 19th, Franz Liszt, Cosima’s father and Wagner’s musical ally, arrived for a visit. Liszt was struck by Wagner’s rapidly deteriorating health, and he came to associate his son-in-law’s apparently imminent death with the black funeral gondolas that passed frequently below his window. He captured his impressions in two elegies closely related in their somber mood, thematic content, rocking rhythmic motion and harmonic style, “different aspects of one another” according to Liszt authority Alan Walker, both titled La Lugubre Gondola. Liszt left Venice and Wagner on January 13, 1883. Less than a month later, on February 13th, Wagner was dead. In 1989, the noted American composer John Adams made an “orchestral realization” of La Lugubre Gondola II under the title The Black Gondola. “The music is a genuine outpouring of deeply felt loss,” Adams wrote, “and its wonderfully ambivalent harmonic language is remarkably prescient, given when it was composed. The chiaroscuro of the phrasing and the swelling and receding of the long, sinuous themes seemed to call out for an orchestral treatment, although my orchestration probably owes more to Wagner than to Liszt.” Harmonium for Large Orchestra and Chorus (1981) John Adams (born in 1947) Harmonium is scored for three piccolos, flute, three oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta, piano, synthesizer and strings. The performance time is 33 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra and Grant Park Chorus first performed this work on July 17, 1982, with Leonard Slatkin conducting. John Adams is one of today’s most acclaimed composers. Audiences have responded enthusiastically to his music, and he enjoys a success not seen by an American composer since the zenith of Aaron Copland’s career: a recent survey of major orchestras conducted by the American Symphony Orchestra League found John Adams to be the most frequently performed living American composer; in 2003, he received the Pulitzer Prize for On the Transmigration of Souls, written for the New York Philharmonic in commemoration of the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, and was recognized by New York’s Lincoln Center with a two-month retrospective of his work titled “John Adams: An American Master,” the most extensive 2013 Program Notes, Book 5 A25 Friday, August 16 and Saturday, August 17, 2013 festival devoted to a living composer ever mounted at Lincoln Center; in 2004, he became the first-ever recipient of the Nemmers Prize in Music Composition, which included residencies and teaching at Northwestern University; he has been granted honorary doctorates from Cambridge, Harvard and Northwestern universities, and the California Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. Adams wrote: “Harmonium began with a simple, totally formed mental image: that of a single tone emerging out of a vast, empty space, and, by means of a gentle unfolding, evolving into a rich, pulsating fabric of sound. This wordless ‘preverbal’ creation scene describes the opening of the piece, and it was fixed in my mind’s eye long before I had even made the decision whether or not to use a text. Some time passed before I was able to get beyond this initial image. I had an intuition of what the work would feel like, but I could not locate the poetic voice to give it shape. When I finally did settle on a text for the piece I was frankly rather surprised by the oddity of my choice. At almost the same time I happened upon an obscure poem with the irresistible title Negative Love by the 17th-century English poet John Donne and two poems by the 19th-century American Emily Dickinson which, together with the Donne poem, suggested a completed unity of form and meaning. “Harmonium is different from all my other works to that time because it has a text. In the Dickinson poems an internal structure is already apparent, and I took advantage of the unhurried cinematographic unfolding of imagery in Because I could not stop for Death to once again utilize the expressive power of changes of key (and in this case changes of mode as well). The ‘placing’ of the speaker — in a slowly moving carriage while the sights and sounds of her life gradually pass her by — created an irresistible opportunity for a slow, disembodied rhythmic continuum. “Negative Love, on the other hand, presented different problems both on the interpretative as well as the imaginary level. What attracted me to the poem was its evasiveness: Every time I read it, it seemed to mean something different. The poem is really about the humility of love, and my response was to see it as a kind of vector, an arrow pointing heavenward. Thus the opening of Negative Love with its rippling waves of orchestral and choral sound sets in motion a musical structure that builds continuously and inexorably to a harmonic culmination point some ten minutes later. Throughout the movement the music is in a constant state of agitation. The tempo is always quickening, the amplitude growing louder and the overall density gaining power and mass until it reaches its peak upon the words: If any who deciphers best, What we know not, our selves, can know, Let him teach me that nothing ... “At this point the entire mass shifts smoothly back to the opening tempo and opening atmosphere. “If Negative Love is a meditation on love and Because I could not stop for Death a sequence of tableau-like images about the arrest of time, Wild Night embraces both of the former themes with a poetic intensity that is at once violent and sexual and full of that longing for forgetfulness which is at the core of all Dickinson’s works. Her goal is far from being some kind of Apollonian serenity of self-realization, her Eden is the sea, the universal archetype of the Unconscious, an immense, nocturnal ocean of feeling where the slow, creaking funeral carriage of the earlier poem now yields to the gentle, unimpeded ‘rowing’ of the final image.” A26 2013 Program Notes, Book 5 About the Artwork in tonight’s performance THE CHOSEN ONE 7ft. x 60 ft. Medium: Dye-sublimation, Sumi-ink, and oil enamel Artist: Herbert Migdoll THE CHOSEN ONE is a painting inspired by The Joffrey Ballet’s production of Vaslav Nijinsky’s ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring). This work is composed of 20 panels encompassing 60 separate images. The focus of Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps revolves around a ritual in which the villagers search for “The Chosen One”. When Migdoll imaged the original dancer, Beatriz Rodriguez performing “The Chosen One” in the 1987 premiere, he had her spin three times exactly as choreographed in the ballet. In the first spin, he imaged the top portion of the body, the second spin he imaged the torso, and the third spin was of the limbs and feet. These three series were then united with no intention of matching but rather to recreate a sense of the frenetic frenzy witnessed during performance. Le Sacre du Printemps was reconstructed by Millicent Hodson, Kenneth Archer, and Robert Joffrey. The Joffrey Ballet will celebrate the 100th anniversary with 4 performances at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University this September 19-22, 2013. BLACK GONDOLA 3 ft. x 27 ft. Medium: acrylic and oil enamel on uncoated aluminum Artist: Herbert Migdoll This painting was created a year after Migdoll’s first trip to Venice, Italy to attend his opening at Ikona Gallery directed by Ziva Kraus. He decided on his second trip to find the perfect Gondola as a subject for a painting. This required a boat with no passengers except for the gondolier. Herbert Migdoll, Director of Special Projects for The Joffrey Ballet, is an artist living and working in Chicago and has exhibited his work most notably in the Permanent Collection of The Museum of Modern Art and in the Art Laguna section of the Venice Biennale in 1995. His painting Turning in Closed Course is a permanent painting installation in Chicago on the fourth floor at McCormick Center’s new Annex. His most recent large-scale work Swimmer300 (15 ft. x 300 ft.) was displayed at Art Prize in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Migdoll’s current gallery affiliation is with Ikona gallery in Venice, Italy. Special thanks to Leigh Levine for her concept of combining the arts of Painting and Dance for the first time at this Festival. 2013 Program Notes, Book 5 A27 Friday, August 16 and Saturday, August 17, 2013 Negative Love or The Nothing Text: John Donne I never stoop’d so low, as they Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey, Seldom to them, which soar no higher Than virtue or the mind to admire, For sense, and understanding may Know what gives fuel to their fire: My love, though silly, is more brave, For may I miss, whene’er I crave, If I know yet, what I would have. If that be simply perfectest Which can by no way be express’d But Negatives, my love is so. To All, which all love, I say no. If any who deciphers best, What we know not, our selves, can know, Let him teach me that nothing: this As yet my ease and comfort is, Though I speed not, I cannot miss. Because I Could Not Stop for Death Text: Emily Dickinson Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the school where children played At wrestling in a ring; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun. We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound. Since then ’tis centuries; but each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses’ heads Were toward eternity. A28 2013 Program Notes, Book 5 Friday, August 16 and Saturday, August 17, 2013 Wild Nights Text: Emily Dickinson Wild Nights — Wild Nights! Were I with thee Wild Nights should be Our luxury! Futile — the Winds — To a Heart in port — Done with the Compass — Done with the Chart! Rowing in Eden — Ah, the sea! Might I but moor — Tonight — In thee! The Rite of Spring, Pictures of Pagan Russia, Ballet in Two Parts (1911-1913) Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) The Rite of Spring is scored for two piccolos, two flutes, alto flute, three oboes, two English horns, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, two bass clarinets, three bassoons, two contrabassoons, six horns, two Wagner tubas, four trumpets, bass trumpets, three trombones, two tubas, timpani, percussion and strings. The performance time is 36 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed this work on August 8, 2001, with Carlos Kalmar conducting. Stravinsky’s conception for the epochal The Rite of Spring came to him as he was finishing The Firebird in 1910. He had a vision of “a solemn pagan rite; wise elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring.” Stravinsky knew that his friend Nicholas Roerich, an archeologist and an authority on the ancient Slavs, would be interested in his idea. Stravinsky also shared the vision with Serge Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballet Russe, the company that had commissioned The Firebird. All three men were excited by the possibilities of the project — Diaghilev promised a production and encouraged Stravinsky to begin work immediately. Having just nearly exhausted himself with the rigors of completing and staging The Firebird, however, Stravinsky decided to compose a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra as relaxation before undertaking his pagan ballet. This little “concert piece,” however, grew into the ballet Petrushka, and he could not return to The Rite until the summer of 1911. “What I was trying to convey in The Rite,” said Stravinsky, “was the surge of spring, the magnificent upsurge of nature reborn.” Inspired by childhood memories of the coming of spring to Russia (“which seemed to begin in an hour and was like the whole earth cracking,” he remembered), he worked with Roerich to devise a libretto which would, in Roerich’s words, “present a number of scenes of earthly joy and celestial triumph as understood by the ancient Slavs.” Stravinsky labored feverishly on the score through the winter of 1911-1912, and Diaghilev scheduled the premiere for May 1913. The performance created a sensation (and a near-riot), and the Rite’s position in the repertory was soon secured. 2013 Program Notes, Book 5 A29 Friday, August 16 and Saturday, August 17, 2013 The following précis of the stage action is excerpted from The Victor Book of Ballet by Robert Lawrence: “The plot deals with archaic Russian tribes and their worship of the gods of the harvest and fertility. These primitive peoples assemble for their yearly ceremonies, play their traditional games, and finally select a virgin to be sacrificed to the gods of Spring so that the crops and tribes may flourish. There is a prelude in which the composer evokes the primitive past. Insistent, barbaric rhythms are heard, shifting accent with almost every bar. The first rites of Spring are being celebrated, and a group of adolescents appears. They dance until other members of the tribe enter. Then the full round of ceremonies gets under way: a mock abduction, games of the rival tribes, the procession of the Sage, and the thunderous dance of the Earth. The curtain falls, and there is a soft interlude representing the pagan night. Soon the tribal meeting place is seen again. It is dark and the adolescents circle mysteriously in preparation for the choice of the virgin to be sacrificed to the gods. Their dance is interrupted, and one of the girls is marked for the tribal offering. The others begin a wild orgy glorifying the Chosen One and — in a barbaric ritual — call on the shades of their ancestors. The supreme moment of the ceremony arrives: the ordeal of the Chosen One. It is the maiden’s duty to dance until she perishes from exhaustion. Throughout the dance, the music gathers power until it ends with a crash as the Maiden dies.” ©2013 Dr. Richard E. Rodda Grant Park Music Festival 2013 ushers and volunteers Festival Ushers Christopher Bales, Sandra Broughton, Jeffrey Callison, Catherine Canale, Darlene Cunneen, Tai Fraction, Mamie Guerra, Randy Hayes, Joshua Hooten, Rebekah Kroesing, Rudy Lagunas, Jonathan Mayo, Lee McQueen, Krista Mickelson, Erin Miesner, Carmen Perez, Dorothy Pertraitis, Marilyn Picchietti, Laurel Prag, Conchita Ramirez-Sullivan, Micah Smith, John Stevenson, Meagan Stevenson, William Sullivan, Victoria Torres, Teresa Yi Festival Docents Lyn Bivins, Peggy Cassidy, Win Eggers, Susan Fauer, Joellen Freeding, Sharon Gilkerson, Susan Gray, Dennis Lord, David Morin, Elaine Roth, Susan Schaalman Youdovin, Charlie Shulkin Festival Volunteers Trudie Acheatel, Aimee Almendras, Richard Belmonte, Joyre Booker, Diane Carter, Mario Caruso, Judy Corbeille, Joan Crow, Stephan Dimos, Nancy Gerich, Barbara Glasper, Dave Haeckel, Joyce Haeckel, Julia Jenkins, Elizabeth Kall, Kent Kauffman, Carolyn Lane, Rita Lee, Hazel Lewis, Sam Lindley, Diane Magee, Asma Mehta, Maya Mehta, Barbara Natal, Karen Nordstrom, Perrianne Nyberg, Bonnie Orton, Sharon Panick, Bonnie Pool, Donna Robertson, Ida Schenwar, George Schultz, Cynthia Sneed, Milan Stevanovich, Michelle Vander Woude, Victoria Warren, Lenora Witcher A30 2013 Program Notes, Book 5